Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Facebook Fail: Now censoring pictures of prophet Muhammad

Only two weeks after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a strongly worded #JeSuisCharlie statement
on the importance of free speech, Facebook has agreed to censor images
of the prophet Muhammad in Turkey — including the very type of image
that precipitated the Charlie Hebdo attack.
It’s an illustration, perhaps, of how extremely complicated and
nuanced issues of online speech really are. It’s also conclusive proof
of what many tech critics said of Zuckerberg’s free-speech declaration
at the time: Sweeping promises are all well and good, but Facebook’s
record doesn’t entirely back it up.
Just this December, Facebook agreed to censor the page of Russia’s
leading Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, at the request of Russian Internet
regulators.